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Category: Innovation

Published October 31, 2015

James Gleick on What Libraries Can (Still) Do

James Gleick (The Information, Faster) on libraries, and James Palfrey’s book BiblioTech: Why Libraries Matter More Than Ever in the Age of Google, at the NYRB Blog:

In the midst of an information explosion, librarians are still the most versatile information specialists we have. And the purest. In his new book, BiblioTech, a wise and passionate manifesto, John Palfrey reminds us that the library is the last free space for the gathering and sharing of knowledge: “Our attention cannot be bought and sold in a library.” As a tradition barely a century and a half old in the United States, it gives physical form to the principle that public access to knowledge is the foundation of democracy.

The problem of libraries now—and it is a problem—involves some paradoxes, which need to be sorted out. For one thing, as Palfrey says, librarians will need to cherish their special talent as “stewards” while letting go of the instinct to be “collectors.” Knowledge in physical form needs to be handled carefully, preserved, and curated. But with digital information pouring into iPhones and Kindles in petabytes—via Twitter and Instagram and YouTube, not to mention Amazon’s self-publishing factories—libraries need to rethink old habits. They cannot collect everything, or even a small fraction of everything. “That model is already too hard to keep up,” Palfrey says. “A network of stewards can accomplish vastly more than a disconnected (even sometimes competitive) group of collectors ever can.”

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Published March 28, 2012

The Impact of Kickstarter, Creative Commons & Creators Project | Off Book

The latest installment of the PBS short documentary series Off Book looks at how interconnectivity is changing the funding and sharing of creative projects:

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Published April 19, 2011

100 x 100: IBM Centennial Film

Moving chronologically from the oldest person to the youngest, 100 x 100 features one hundred people presenting the achievements of IBM recorded in the year they were born. The film gives a brief history of the company and features — as you might expect for the company that worked so closely with Paul Rand — some lovely typography:

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Published September 23, 2010

Chance Favours the Connected Mind

A clever book trailer for Steven Johnson’s new book Where Good Ideas Come From :

(via Kottke)

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Published July 28, 2010

Rework

Co-founder of 37 Signals and author of Rework Jason Fried talks to Peter Hopkins, co-founder of Big Think, in this hour-long interview for HP’s Input| Output series:

It all seems like good advice, especially if you run a small business (or thinking of starting one), and while it’s hard to pin down any specific relevance for the book industry,  it got me thinking about this post again, and the idea we should always focus on making stuff.

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Published June 30, 2010

The Slow Media Manifesto

Slow Media is a blog about literature, music, film, arts and entertainment. Here, re-posted with permission, is their Slow Media Manifesto:

The first decade of the 21st century, the so-called ‘naughties’, has brought profound changes to the technological foundations of the media landscape. The key buzzwords are networks, the Internet and social media. In the second decade, people will not search for new technologies allowing for even easier, faster and low-priced content production. Rather, appropriate reactions to this media revolution are to be developed and integrated politically, culturally and socially. The concept “Slow”, as in “Slow Food” and not as in “Slow Down”, is a key for this. Like “Slow Food”, Slow Media are not about fast consumption but about choosing the ingredients mindfully and preparing them in a concentrated manner. Slow Media are welcoming and hospitable. They like to share.

1. Slow Media are a contribution to sustainability. Sustainability relates to the raw materials, processes and working conditions, which are the basis for media production. Exploitation and low-wage sectors as well as the unconditional commercialization of user data will not result in sustainable media. At the same time, the term refers to the sustainable consumption of Slow Media.

2. Slow media promote Monotasking. Slow Media cannot be consumed casually, but provoke the full concentration of their users. As with the production of a good meal, which demands the full attention of all senses by the cook and his guests, Slow Media can only be consumed with pleasure in focused alertness.

3. Slow Media aim at perfection. Slow Media do not necessarily represent new developments on the market. More important is the continuous improvement of reliable user interfaces that are robust, accessible and perfectly tailored to the media usage habits of the people.

4. Slow Media make quality palpable. Slow Media measure themselves in production, appearance and content against high standards of quality and stand out from their fast-paced and short-lived counterparts – by some premium interface or by an aesthetically inspiring design.

5. Slow Media advance Prosumers, i.e. people who actively define what and how they want to consume and produce. In Slow Media, the active Prosumer, inspired by his media usage to develop new ideas and take action, replaces the passive consumer. This may be shown by marginals in a book or animated discussion about a record with friends. Slow Media inspire, continuously affect the users’ thoughts and actions and are still perceptible years later.

6. Slow Media are discursive and dialogic. They long for a counterpart with whom they may come in contact. The choice of the target media is secondary. In Slow Media, listening is as important as speaking. Hence ‘Slow’ means to be mindful and approachable and to be able to regard and to question one’s own position from a different angle.

7. Slow Media are Social Media. Vibrant communities or tribes constitute around Slow Media. This, for instance, may be a living author exchanging thoughts with his readers or a community interpreting a late musician’s work. Thus Slow Media propagate diversity and respect cultural and distinctive local features.

8. Slow Media respect their users. Slow Media approach their users in a self-conscious and amicable way and have a good idea about the complexity or irony their users can handle. Slow Media neither look down on their users nor approach them in a submissive way.

9. Slow Media are distributed via recommendations not advertising: the success of Slow Media is not based on an overwhelming advertising pressure on all channels but on recommendation from friends, colleagues or family. A book given as a present five times to best friends is a good example.

10. Slow Media are timeless: Slow Media are long-lived and appear fresh even after years or decades. They do not lose their quality over time but at best get some patina that can even enhance their value.

11. Slow Media are auratic: Slow Media emanate a special aura. They generate a feeling that the particular medium belongs to just that moment of the user’s life. Despite the fact that they are produced industrially or are partially based on industrial means of production, they are suggestive of being unique and point beyond themselves.

12. Slow Media are progressive not reactionary: Slow Media rely on their technological achievements and the network society’s way of life. It is because of the acceleration of multiple areas of life, that islands of deliberate slowness are made possible and essential for survival. Slow Media are not a contradiction to the speed and simultaneousness of Twitter, Blogs or Social Networks but are an attitude and a way of making use of them.

13. Slow Media focus on quality both in production and in reception of media content: Craftsmanship in cultural studies such as source criticism, classification and evaluation of sources of information are gaining importance with the increasing availability of information.

14. Slow Media ask for confidence and take their time to be credible. Behind Slow Media are real people. And you can feel that.

Stockdorf and Bonn, Jan 2, 2010

Benedikt Köhler
Sabria David
Jörg Blumtritt

(via Wired)

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Published May 26, 2009

What’s Next For Publishers?

An unforeseen consequence of the “New Think for Old Publishers” debacle at SXSW in earlier this year is that I will be a participant in a session on the role of the publishers in the digital age at Book Camp Toronto on June 6th.

140 Character Assassination

The now infamous SXSW panel was supposed to discuss “what’s going right and what’s going wrong in publishing, assess success of recent forays into marketing digitally, digital publishing, and what books and blogs have to gain from one another.”

As has been well documented elsewhere, things did not go according to plan.

Despite the presence of heavyweight panelists (including the venerable Clay Shirky), new ideas were in short supply. Audience frustration overflowed on to Twitter and an array of 140 character bullets (identified by a #sxswbp hashtag) ripped into the panel, with what was perhaps the kill-shot fired by a writer in the audience:

“If, as an author, I can design it myself, write it myself, publish it myself, why would I bother going to a publisher at all? What purpose do you serve?”*

Existential Crisis

The old answer to this question was that publishers offered technical expertise and mass distribution.

But, nowadays, digital technology has made it easy for writers to publish, distribute and market their own books independently. And whilst professional editing, design, production, distribution, and marketing may still be valuable and sought-after services, it’s become very apparent that the perceived gap between self-publishing and traditional publishing is narrowing.

The battering that the SXSW panel took inadvertently revealed what we have long-suspected — publishers need to change the way they think about themselves, the decisions they make, and the services they offer, or cease to exist.

Fine Filtering

One idea that gained some currency in the aftermath of SXSW was that publishers are — or could be — ‘cultural curators’, a role made only more important by the explosion of content created and distributed by digital technology.

In a world where it is impossible to read everything that is emailed, texted, tweeted, posted, uploaded, or printed, there is an opportunity for publishers to become trusted advisers who sift through the vast digital slush-pile and present only the best, most interesting work. Or so the argument goes.

Unfortunately, the truth of the matter is that publishers haven’t proved to be very effective at curating in the past, and it’s precisely this kind of pretension that gets them in trouble at events like SXSW.

A rap sheet of opportunistic publishing, self-indulgence, costly blunders, and generally too much poor product means that publishers (not to mention the mainstream media) have squandered any cultural authority they may once have had, and have been superseded by an informal network of curators connected online.

Furthermore, curation doesn’t really explain what publishers actually do for authors. If it’s just filtering (by set a of cultural criteria I may or may not agree with), why bother going to a publisher at all?

Strengthening the Signal

Not long after after SXSW I sat down in Toronto with Book Camp TO organizer Hugh McGuire to discuss these crumbling cultural hierarchies and the implications for publishers.

Expressing my dissatisfaction with the idea of publishers as curators  — and trying to take into account Hugh’s reader-centric approach — I suggested that perhaps we’d stand ourselves in better stead if we thought of ourselves more as ‘advocates’.

More proactive than curation, advocacy takes into account that publishers do more than find completed works of art and present them to the public. And it goes at least part way towards explaining what publishers do for authors, whilst offering a model for how they can interact meaningfully (and honestly) with readers.

Perhaps, just as crucially, it also means being able to effectively publish and promote books that we believe in, without making any of the claims of cultural authority or superiority that are attached to curating — the framework of advocacy works whether you are publishing literary fiction or genre, poetry or humour.

Admittedly, there are probably minimal and maximal versions of what ‘publisher as advocate’ means. On the minimal side, publishers promote (and defend if necessary) their books in the public forum. A more maximal version — which is probably where my thinking lies — would not simply limit advocacy to marketing a finished product. It would begin with the commissioning editor championing the work in-house, and continue through the production of the book to the publicist who is pitching it to reviewers, and beyond. It would also mean publishing less and publishing better.

So…

These ideas are not definitive. In fact they’re a rather hurried formation (at the prompting of Sean Cranbury) of a jumble of ideas that I’ve had kicking around my head that need more time, but also more air and more discussion.

The Book Camp Toronto session about the role of publishers is on Saturday June 6th at the University of Toronto’s iSchool. Please come along and share your ideas. If you can’t make it, please feel free to leave your feedback, ideas, and links in the comments section or send me an email or a DM.

Over and Out.

* For the record, this quotation is from panelist Peter Miller‘s account of #sxswbp

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Published March 19, 2009

6 Projects Video

6 Projects That Could Change Publishing For the Better — Video of Michael Tamblyn’s talk at BNC Technology Forum 2009:

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Published February 24, 2009

Unproduct

More Ideas, Less Stuff — London-based graphic designer Ben Terrett of the Really Interesting Group and Noisy Decent Graphics is in The Guardian today talking about Things Our Friends Have Written On The Internet 2008, a limited-edition newspaper that collected together interesting stuff from the internet, and the idea of  ‘unproduct’, or creating more value but producing less stuff:

Originally coined by the designer Matt Jones and built upon by the strategist Russell Davies, among others, unproduct is basically maximum idea, minimum stuff… More than anything, unproduct is a new way of thinking about things. A new model. So is making something and giving it away. So are joint ventures. We’ve got people building stuff quickly, trying out new ideas, often for free. We have clients and agencies taking risks and more importantly sharing those risks. We’re creating maximum ideas and minimum stuff.

When people start talking to me about e-books, I have to confess there’s a small part of my brain that begins to shut down because I just don’t find them intrinsically interesting (inevitable and utilitarian yes, fun and interesting, no). But I love the idea of applying unproduct-type principles to publishing.

Sadly I don’t own a copy of Things Are Friends Have Written on the Internet 2008, but I gather that on the last page Russell Davies and Ben Terrett say: “2009 feels like a year for printing and making real stuff in the real world. Its going to be exciting”.

I hope so. I think this is fantastic.

Link

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